Harassed jail guard gets $3M

Appeals court increases damages to be paid to former Rensselaer County female officer

By Brendan J. Lyons

Published 11:19 pm, Thursday, August 13, 2015

Photo: LUANNE M. FERRIS

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Sgt. Lora Abbott, left, and Officer Wendy Eiega of the Rensselaer County Sheriff's Department are shown in a 2005 photo. (Times Union archive)

Sgt. Lora Abbott, left, and Officer Wendy Eiega of the Rensselaer County Sheriff's Department are shown in a 2005 photo. (Times Union archive)

Photo: LUANNE M. FERRIS

Harassed jail guard gets $3M

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Albany

A state appeals court issued a decision Thursday sharply increasing the financial damages Rensselaer County must pay a former female jail sergeant who was subjected to severe sexual harassment by a group of male officers at the facility.

The ruling by the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court in Albany entitles the former sergeant, Lora Abbott Seabury, to more than $3 million, including a lump sum of up to $1.46 million — payable by Rensselaer County — for the state pension she would have received if she had stayed on the job. The decision also increased the amount of lost wages the county must pay Seabury — by $264,600 — to $580,995.

The damages also include several hundred thousand dollars in interest.

In 2013, an administrative law judge with the state Division of Human Rights determined Seabury was harassed by a clique of jail officers known as the "Boys Club" and that top sheriff's officials at the jail engaged in "deliberate inaction" in dealing with the harassment of Seabury.

Seabury, 47, started working at the jail in 1993, but left her job on disability in 2010 and was under the care of a doctor for serious emotional trauma and depression.

Records in the case indicated she was considered a good employee and ranked at the top in civil service exams she took to become a jail officer and later a sergeant.

She did not work for more than six months after leaving the sheriff's department but eventually got a job at Walmart.

The harassment against Seabury peaked in 2010 when, as a watch commander, she filed disciplinary action against two officers who were sleeping on duty.

One of the officers, Richard Fenton, had allegedly sexually assaulted Seabury three years earlier by touching her breasts and buttocks.

She did not report the alleged abuse by Fenton in 2007 because she was afraid of how other guards would react, according to records in the case.

Seabury said the harassment intensified and she took her complaints to a captain, Harold Smith, who a judge found did nothing to stop the abuse and told Seabury to "be tough."

The Appellate Division outlined some of the egregious behavior in the decision handed down Thursday.

"According to Seabury, members of the boys club began to level slurs at both Seabury and another female employee who had reported Fenton for sexual harassment, slurs that included rat, bitch, slut and whore," the Appellate Division said. "The men also began making rat noises while in the presence of the two female employees."

The administrative law judge who presided over a trial in the case two years ago said the atmosphere at the jail "was well-known to the administrators," including "hostility, bullying and intimidation."

Shawn F. Brousseau, an Albany attorney who represented the county in the case, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Seabury's attorney, Kevin A. Luibrand, said the former jail sergeant was often made physically ill from the harassment.

"Lora was bright and dedicated and tough ... and on track to be the county's first female jail lieutenant," Luibrand said. "They tormented her to the point that they wrecked her career, and in the end, she was throwing up daily in the parking lot before walking into work, and crying uncontrollably on the way home."